U.S. and Philippine military personnel distribute food aid after Typhoon Botha, Dec. 2012, a mission that the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific sees as growing more frequent due to climate change. Photo: U.S. Pacific Command/Flickr

Climate Change Is the Biggest Threat in the Pacific, Says Top U.S. Admiral

U.S. and Philippine military personnel distribute food aid after Typhoon Botha, Dec. 2012, a mission that the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific sees as growing more frequent due to climate change. Photo: U.S. Pacific Command/Flickr

North Korea just annulled the 1953 armistice ending its war with South Korea. China and Japan are locked in a dispute over an island chain. But the greatest long-term threat to the peace of East Asia and Pacific Ocean — the part of the world at the heart of the Obama administration’s aspirational defense strategy — is climate change, according to the admiral in charge of U.S. military operations there.

“You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level,” Locklear told Danger Room pal Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe over the weekend. “Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”

“I’m into the consequence management side of it,” Locklear told Bender. “I’m not a scientist, but the island of Tarawa in Kiribati, they’re contemplating moving their entire population to another country because [it] is not going to exist anymore.”